The Republican Response

They were silent. They were silent as those to the left of them roared with applause over unemployment issurance. They were silent over the president's proposal to immediately pass a job bill. They were silent during, and they were silent after. The Republicans were silent as a familiar scene unfolded: a Democratic president gave a speech to a divided Congress.

President Obama's speech on Thursday was his fifth to a joint session of Congress in the last 2 and 1/2 years. To many, it was his most aggressive. He began pushing members to "pass the bill" before he even explained the anatomy of his proposal of $447 billion in job creating measures. Actions such as infrastructure spending and a payroll tax cut are estimated to create 1.9 million jobs.

Economists have begun crunching the numbers on Obama's proposal, and so far no glaring errors have come to surface. The mouth of the Republicans, John Boehner, even said that these measures "merit consideration."

But that is almost as far as the talking went on the Republican side. The House Republicans, enduring a near government shutdown and national default, perhaps decided it was best to finally seek common ground. Presidential addresses are somewhat of a rarity, and they are certainly politically intimate. Citizens who make their living off of denouncing the other party behind their back for a few hours suddenly become vis-a-vis. Aside from Representative Joe Wilson's famous outburst, tradition demands respect to the president during the elaborate rituals of an address. And so the Republicans chose their only method of dissent. When the other side got up to applaud on issues of collective bargaining or business tax credits, the Republicans chose to sit - they chose to be silent.